German politics

State of shock?

Why North Rhine-Westphalia matters

ON SUNDAY May 9th, voters in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) will elect their government. Any election in NRW, the most populous of Germany's 16 Länder (states), is a significant political event in the country. This one matters more than most, for two reasons.

First, the ruling Christian Democratic Union-Free Democratic Party (CDU-FDP) coalition may lose its majority in NRW, and the reverberations from such a defeat would extend all the way to Berlin. The Bundesrat, effectively Germany's upper federal chamber, is composed of representatives from the states' governing coalitions (see graphic, below). Germany's ruling coalition, another CDU-FDP double act, has a small majority in the Bundesrat, but defeat in NRW on Sunday would tip the balance, making it more difficult for Angela Merkel to pursue her legislative agenda.

Second, if the CDU-FDP coalition is unseated in NRW, the government that takes its place may take on an interesting hue. One possibility is a “grand coalition” between the CDU and the Social Democratic Party, of the sort that ruled Germany between 2005 and last year.

More unusual would be a CDU-Green alliance. Although political and cultural differences have historically kept the two parties apart, the gap between them may be narrowing. No large German state has ever experienced such a “black-green” coalition (although Hamburg, a small state, has been under CDU-Green rule since 2008), but NRW has often experimented with political arrangements that are later tried at federal level.